A Brief Inventory

Please keep the shadows long
and the afternoons golden and green
and our conversations relaxed and easy
remember the birds, they flit from branch to branch,
I like that, too.
And the slow sunset,
and the fresh colors of dusk and twilight,
oh, and night. Dark night, sparkly with stars
and a moon sometimes
but sometimes not.
Mornings gently occur
with a softness to the light of day
a hint of blue and a subtle yellow
and green hills
and fluffy clouds
and sometimes no clouds
and sometimes rain clouds
and sometimes rain
and sometimes snow for some people if they want it,
or wind that doesn't fight anybody very hard
but maybe musses hairdos and clothes a bit
and causes people to duck slightly as they step outside from inside
and makes sparks jump from person to person
or person to thing just a little and always by surprise.
And let's keep storm systems
that clean and wash the sky and rivers and oceans and forests and streets
without making the news.
Yes. All that.
Thanks.

Resting on the Wheel

Driving along a little side-street at fifteen-twenty miles per hour
There's no traffic but you, and it's a good thing I see you coming, big white panel van
veering over across the center
still a good 30 feet away from me.

It's all early morning slow motion
nothing to be alarmed about but hey--maybe so:
Shouldn't you be staying on your own side of the road?

I beep. Your trajectory does not change.
I honk. Your trajectory does not change.
I honk longer.

Now I can see your face, directed downward
but don't worry. I don't think for a moment that you are
dead in there, unconscious, having a health event;
I know the behavior too well
and ah, now maybe you heard my noise,
Yeah no, you still veer, and I am observing in the slo-mo-moment momentum
the diagonal line you defaulted to is unchanging.

I lay on the horn and adjust steering toward the shoulder of the road to make a bay-line around you
and I watch for the eye contact.
Your face lifts slightly and there it is, yeah no:
you raise your face to the direction of the road ahead,
that trick of timing, that tick to tell your conscience you're doing fine, little phone in one hand,
the other resting on the wheel.

Ode to Camping

No hot shower. No soft bed. Sunlight glaring in your face before you are ready to wake. Noisy trailer generators hum at varied distances, masking the sounds of birdsong you wanted to hear. Sap on tabletops. Your ancestors strived to live indoors. Conestoga wagons in the hot sun.

Now there is a caveat: a hike too far from civilization to plug in anything, a remote location where the stars at night seem to arrive in shifts as your eyes adjust to the darkness, a cool snow-melt lake, waves gently curving to shore as they have been since before humans took over, bare basics of food packed in, trash packed out, peace, quiet, observation, near silent walks on soft fallen pine-needles, conversation with like-minded companions, birds that flit, swoop and sing.  Raise the food high away from bears and deer, wrapped well against the squirrels.  Stare at the sky through branches, boughs even, rest. Of course there is a reason to camp. Do I want to go?  No.  But do I want to be there? Of course.

The Spider Feels

That feeling when you’re not afraid of spiders and go out of your way to put them outside when you find them in the house, but as you walk to your car in the summer night you’re pretty sure you walked through a web so you run your hands down your arms and feel that perhaps you’ve brushed off the web and that the spider is not with you, but you feel a little bit like a bad actor who doesn’t really commit to the role and you know you’re not certain that you’ve accomplished the task—if there was a spider at all.

That feeling that feels like a three quarters truth that there was no spider; it was just a stray hair falling along your bare arm, you get in the car and begin the drive home, a block or two a tickle: is that the light touch of spider feet on your hand? Can’t look. Traffic to contend with no it must be that hair.

That feeling as you recognize in no uncertain terms spider tracks on your hand so you fling and shake the hand outward toward the passenger seat and figure you’ve launched the spider away to somewhere else in the car. You don’t want to open the window and kill it, but please stay in your own territory Spider, now you have your place.

That feeling as you drive down the boulevard that maybe there was no spider and the lady on the radio is talking about her life so the subject is now in the past, irrelevant.

That feeling as your peripheral vision captures, as if a cartoon silhouetted against the driver’s side window, a really big spider dropping from the ceiling working its web line for dear life and you flinch (and you drive safely!) and though you know that spider is more disrupted and more scared of you than you are of it, still you're sent into the throe of a squirm, wiggle and a vocal pitch of a “whoop-whoop!”

Focusing on driving skill you make your turn and turn again into the alley to slow by tree branches so you can open the window and let the spider out and you finally get a good look: stripes like a zebra, spotted like a leopard, the size of a nickel! Relief it’s not the orb weaver whose boundaries you’d been so bent on respecting all week.

That feeling where you hope you didn’t just accidentally crush it between the window and the frame, and you haven’t, and you introduce it to its new home but it now knows only you and tries to stay, or maybe it’s confused because it is rushing toward you as if panicked so you open the door and with the motion it drops on its line to the alley floor so you close the door and race away. That painful suspicion that the spider is still attached to the car, hanging on for dear life like James Bond on the rail of a helicopter in the Alps.

You don’t have much farther to go and you pull into the garage, park and close the garage door. You open the car door and there—it—is. It has made it through so much, still trying to get a semblance of place it perches on the bottom of the car door frame. Is it catching its breath?

That feeling as you get out of the car and look to the shelves and grab for something to capture it in and you find the lid of a spray paint can. Now you can catch the spider and put it on a plant. That is all you wanted.

That feeling as it quickly drops to the garage floor and runs under the car and away. Fair enough.

That feeling as you leave the scene to go into the house that spiders are crawling on you. That sense persisting as you take care of a few chores. The quick spin and brush of the arms, pats of your shoulders, slaps at ghosts of spider webs as they suggest themselves again and again.

How sensitive we are to these ages old relationships. Human to spider, since forever ago I’m sure—sudden surprise entanglements that linger.

The Super Guru on the Fence

"Ah Wise Children, in your hurry to sound profound take care to avoid jumping to conclusions." - The Super Guru on the Fence

I am the Super Guru on the Fence-- at least for today.

Sports Thoughts

I have tried many times to discover an appreciation for sports, but this is as far as I ever get:


"Hmmm... the shape of the play area is interesting. The colors are pretty. I wonder what the fabric is. I hope they aren't getting brain damage... wow there are a lot of logos around the field. Are the color commentators gonna ever stop talking [when watched on TV of course]. Hmmm... look at the sky. The stars are out during the daytime, we just can't see them, except the sun. The sun is a star. The universe is so big... it's infinite. What is infinity? Those are nice outfits the athletes are wearing. What time is it?"